There's No Place Like Anywhere But Chûgoku

What a difference a narrow strip of water makes. I'm talking about the Kaimon Straight, the tiny passage that separates Kyûshû and Honshû, Fukuoka and Yamaguchi Prefectures. On one side lay Moji and on the other Shimonoseki, which, because of the bridge, tunnel and ferry links to Kitakyûshû, is essentially one big suburb. Maia and I have gone that far, but no further—until last week.

Another glorious Golden Week has come and gone for we residents of Japan, that time when a handful of holidays and royal birthdays align just right to give us three days off in a row. We were planning on three or four days of misanthropic adventure, drinking malt liquor, driving around shooting up road signs and generally kicking around our island neighbor to the east, Shikoku, but once again the logic of Japan has taken us down with a swift right jab. There are two ferries offering service between Kyûshû and where we wanted to go in Shikoku, one from Saganoseki, the other from Usuki, and normally their ships depart once an hour for the seventy-minute trip across the straights. Oh how I wish normality would win the day just once over here. Golden Week is a time of year when everyone knows there's going to be plenty of movement around the island as Ma and Pa Tanaka jet or drive off to Kalamazoo, Japan. Making money hand over fist during this time for anyone intrepid enough to remain open or even offer enhanced services isn't just a possibility, it's inevitable. So why in the hell did these two ferry companies cut service from one ferry per hour to one ferry per day! Of course it was sold out and of course we were fools to believe any trip of this sort wouldn't involve months of planning and carefully laid out spreadsheets.

So within the span of fifteen minutes as we scrambled in vain to find any ferry that would take us across our GW plans were laid to waste. This little issue was compounded by the fact that one of Maia's college friends now living in Kobe was planning on meeting us on Shikoku in Matsuyama for a bit of beach camping. We thought about the situation for about as long as it takes to microwave popcorn and figured that the only course of action would be to meet on Honshû in Hiroshima since he could easily reach it via Shinkansen. Hiroshima is the largest city in what's known as the Chûgoku region, the southern reaches of the main island that is also some of the least densely populated land in the nation, and we were about to see just what that means in real terms.

After making the jump from Moji to Shimonoseki through the Kaimon Tunnel, for those heading north, there's really only one logical choice if you're going it cheap and not using the expressways (literal highway robbery): Route 2. Like I said, this is not the most populated part of the country, however I didn't expect it to be one of the more depressed. Not far past Shimonoseki is a Nissin Cup Noodle factory (I wanted to pull off and see if they offer tours, Maia just wanted to hit me until I agreed to move on. Not a fan of cup noodles I guess) and then...very little else. And I don't just mean in that immediate vicinity, this is the state for the next hundred or so kilometers. The verdant green of spring and the occasional ghost town were our traveling companions. Maia can attest to the fact that something like 75% of the roadside businesses were shuttered up. One thing we could have a chuckle about along the way though is how much Yamaguchi Prefecture seems to hate their own capital, Yamaguchi City. As we approached and passed the city there were nearly no signs indicating that it existed—they all read out the distance to cities around or past Yamaguchi. A sad fate for the metropolis once hailed as “The Kyoto of the West”.

And then there was Shûnan. Last year when I went to Osaka and Kobe I described the city of Amagasaki as the worst, most blighted place in Japan I have ever seen, but that honor may just go to Shûnan now. Driving along the coast from our direction the transition is as abrupt as a bucket of ice water to the face: you just come over a hill and, boom, there it is, a city of factories and smokestacks as far as the eye can see. So many of the apartment buildings are corporate dorms and many have company names or logos on them like “Mitsubishi Concrete” and “Japan Vinyl House”. Charming names, really. Company towns creep me the heck out, but more importantly I can't see how individuals healthy in mind and body can be brought up in such a place. Perhaps it instills a greater appreciation for beauty and love for nature, but more likely it just breeds cookie cutter drudges.

Just a glimpse of Shûnan. Imagine this image of houses backed by sprawling industrial estates for tens of kilometers down the coast and you've got this city.

We couldn't get out of Shûnan quick enough and time was running out before Maia's friend's train arrived so I decided to ride the expressway a short and cheap jump to the city of Otake just outside Hiroshima. No sooner did we get off the highway though than we ran into a massive traffic backup reaching twenty-five kilometers outside the city. We're all very familiar with traffic snarls in California and the constant jockeying and lane changes required to get ahead, but what do you do on a two-lane road? After perhaps a half-hour and less than a kilometer I was pissed off that this road, this trans-Honshû route 2, the main artery in and out of the only major city in the region was a two-lane POS that gets this funky. We bit the bullet and jumped back on the expressway to get into the city.

This is becoming much too long so I'll end here and pick this up later on. I'm pretty sure I can finish this in one more installment if you'll bear with me.

--Matt

How To Raise Future Bomb-Shelter-Squatting, Shotgun-Clutching Children

Remember that episode of The Simpsons where the family came to Japan, ran out of cash and had to appear on a local, cruel game show to win their plane tickets home? Of course you do, but if you thought that depiction of TV on this far side of the planet was a work of fiction from the minds of Hollywood writers then I have some news for you. And hey, it turns out that after decades of abusing contestants and just plain normal people everywhere these shows continue their abusive march onwards to find ever more ways to deeply scar the populace...young and old.

This show in particular--I'm afraid I don't know the name of it--seems to specialize in terrorizing the young'uns because I saw another episode where kids come home to find a dead body in their kitchen, with hilarious(?) consequences. So, without further ado, I give you TV hosts traumatizing children for life. $20 says one of these kids goes on a rampage and decapitates scores of "zombies" in a shopping mall within five years time.

PS: The subtitles are fairly accurate.

PPS: The kids' names are all part of the "New Wave" Japanese tendency to impart their kids with needlesly complicated and ridiculous titles, just like you see way too many kids named "Hunter," "Sapphyre," "Chardonnay," "Zane" and the like in America.

--Matt

Tricks Up Her Sleeve

Wednesday was Showa No Hi, the annual holiday honoring the Showa emperor, and Maia and I took advantage of it to explore a neglected (by me) part of the prefecture and chill out from the bad-then-good events of the day before. The holiday's was smack in the middle of the week this year for maximum annoyance, delivering the tease of a weekend and then slapping you in the face with the fact that yes, indeed there is work tomorrow. Bastards.

The day before began with me participating in Kusu JHS's ensoku field trip to the top of Mt. Kirikabu. It wasn't pretty, but what do you expect when you put two hundred screaming kids on a march up a mountain? I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say it was a crap cake with sprinkles on top—dealing with the fighting, bullying, littering on and eroding of a wonderful mountainside, plus the general shenanigans that kids get up to was taxing to say the least. When the rain and thunder came to scare us all away I was thankful to have the field trip cut short, but secretly hoping we'd stay and raise the chances one of the demonic kids (not the good ones) would become a pile of lightning-induced ash. A man can dream.

Later on Maia and I tore out of Kusu and headed to Oita for a performance by our friend, Rie, supplier of fine Kyushu-designed shirts and general mirth. First, though was dinner at our new favorite restaurant, a little Indian/Nepalese joint called Surya. This is the first restaurant offering 100% authentic cuisine of the Asian Subcontinent that we've found in Kyushu so far and hands down the best curry in the prefecture. Apologies to Pushkar in Nakatsu, hope your feelings aren't hurt over being displaced as the top shooter here, however the Saffron Rice Incident still burns in our minds to this day.

The show was held in a quaint little live house on the second floor of a dilapidated building and was a bittersweet experience from the get go. After having the chance to meet Rie's friends and acquaintances it became excruciatingly obvious (yet again) that life would have been incalculably more interesting had I been placed in this city rather than Kusu. Despite being just a minuscule (in comparison to other Japanese cities) dot on the map, a secondary industrial tributary to the Fukuoka/Kitakyushu production powerhouse, this city is still the home to some of the relentlessly unique free-thinkers I enjoy and are so damn rare in this country. Still, with this ringing in the back of my head the show was freewheeling and fun as hell. The theme tonight was Shibuya-kei, a J-pop sub-genre straight out of Tokyo's ever-so-fashionable neighborhood of the same name that I'd love to describe to you if a concise way existed to do so. All I can say is to check out Pizzicato Five, Cornelius, Supercar and their contemporaries for the answer. Back in the mid-90s these were the first Japanese sounds I heard and loved, and damn if they're not still the most fantastic things out there.

The show started a tad late and went for a couple hours meaning we didn't get home until around 3AM, so you can see our need to chill out. My body though...it just can't sleep like it used to be able—I couldn't sleep past 10AM if my life depended on it. But that was fine, we got a more normal start on the day and headed out towards Nakatsu for lunch at a newly discovered organic foods buffet. In Japan though, it's not called a buffet, it's called—and you're going to love this—a “viking”, possibly because we're raping and plundering the food table. In longboats.

Every "viking" plundering should be followed by a walk to a bridge this lovely. Then, perhaps Usa is the Great Satan afterall since route 666 snakes insidiously within its borders. Oh, that's Usa, Japan. Right...

After lunch the plan was to get up to the Innai and Ajimu areas in the mountains that separate Kusu and Usa, but we detoured to Nakatsu to feed our addiction to The Game and see Japan's very ordinary looking Route 666 leaving very little time to poke around either town. A feeble attempt was made to go onsen-ing in Innai, but the first establishment we found was closed and we couldn't be bothered to find the other one nearby, plus the sun was starting to sink low. This, it turned out, was a blessing in disguise because had we settled on an Innai joint we would never have bothered to turn off towards Udo No Sô on the route 387 homestretch.

These are the typical kinds of bird enclosures found at any farm, only their contents are anything but.

Here's the kicker for me on this day: I pass by Udo No Sô at least once every two weeks because it lies within the Kusu boundries on the way to one of my schools, Hiju JHS. I had seen the signs and never bothered to turn off because the onsen proper is situated maybe half a kilometer off the main road down an extremely steep incline in a tight little valley. How could I have allowed myself to remain ignorant about this place? Actually, I'm not convinced many people in Kusu know about it either seeing as how nobody every mentioned it when asked what a good onsen in town is. If they knew about this place they'd say Udo No Sô is the best, no contest. For 1,000 yen Maia and I rented a private room and took one of the nicest baths either of us had experienced since Kokonoe's Kyûsuikei a couple months previously. The water was immaculate and the scenery hauntingly beautiful.

Hard to tell if this valley is more stunning in the sun or moonlight.

Even if I won't be around much longer to enjoy it it's nice to know this ol' town still has some tricks up her sleeve.

--Matt

The American Dream...and Tits

It's a well-known fact that Maia and I are hummus junkies, and it must have been our collective desperation for it that drove the two of us to journey over an hour to Dazaifu and brave (well, what she considers) the scorching weather all to take the plunge into Deepest, Darkest Exported Americana at...Fukuoka Costco. Certainly curiosity had something to do with it. Would that stereotypical Japanese spirit of wa induce all the shoppers to pilot their oversized carts up and down the lanes single-file on the left and right, or would the spores of frenzied bargain hunting gain purchase in their minds leading to pileups of twisted metal and mass insanity? Would the quantities be pared down to fit Japanese sensibilities and the store restyled to look less like a wharf side warehouse? That's what we wanted to go find out, but first a little culture to immunize ourselves in case of the worst.

We once again made a stop off at the Kyushu National Museum, this time to see an exhibition of treasures from Tibet. I really like this museum, in case you didn't get that idea from the two or three other times I've written about going there. Its permanent collection is top-notch (even if the description cards fronting each display are in atrociously bad, hilarious Engrish), everything is immaculately displayed and the traveling shows it receives I'd pay to go see anywhere in the world. You can scam cheaper entry with a college ID despite not actually being a student also, but that's merely a happy bonus. Oh yeah, it's attached to the Tenmangu Shrine too, home of the best soft serve ice cream shop (it's a window, really) I've come across yet. At the exhibit itself we were treated to hundreds of Tibetan artifacts, some over 1,300 years old. In my opinion the star of the show was a thousand-arm Kannon statue that actually had, believe it or not, a thousand arms! I know because we did a rough count on each side and came up with a figure close to a thousand, so we probably missed some arms along the way in there.

Costco was a ways out of town from the museum and we took the entirely unremarkable local roads to get into the general vicinity. I say “general vicinity” because we actually didn't know exactly where it was other than being somewhere on the outskirts of Fukuoka and Dazaifu in the town of Hisayama. Really, the place can hardly be called Fukuoka Costco at all as it's something like twenty kilometers outside the city center, practically halfway to Kitakyushu. Regardless, we found it, and after witnessing the shopping center this Costco sits in I don't think anyone would ever say small and efficient are the only way the Japanese know how to build: The complex is so massive and sprawling it occupies two lots on either side of the road, has overpasses connecting both and a bus system that makes a circuit of the lots! You have got to be joking me.

After filling out the form, pating the obligatory 4,000 yen and getting a really really terrible head shot taken I had a member's card and was set loose inside with an altogether too large shopping cart. It's really been years since I stepped foot in a Costco for anything other than prescription glasses so I never noticed that the variety of goods isn't that great, there's just a lot of certain things. It's probably due to that quality that we never did find the hummus we came all this way for, instead settling for a huge block of cheese, angelic frozen cheese/spinach raviolis (how many years has it been!), green olives, coffee and a tub of salad greens. Altogether it cost something like 8,000 yen.

The shopping denizens of Fukuoka Costco are, I think, not so much different than those that frequent the Mother Stores: Big families, big helpings of soda and snacks, big asses. Yes, being a trashy slob is an international phenomena. Their cart driving is as annoying as America only with the Japanese twist that folks here treat this activity like they treat driving their cars, i.e. unbearably slow progress along the aisles and carts are left abandoned in the rows at awkward angles for everyone to navigate around. Really, if I wanted this I'd stay in Kusu and circle the town in my car.

Leaving that circus behind we made for the other side of the shopping complex for a shabby dinner and movie. I mean, only the dinner was shabby (sub-sub-par Italian), the movie was top-shelf stuff--Oppai Bare. Keep in mind that the sole reason we wanted to see this movie is because it was filmed in Kitakyushu, near Maia's former 'hood. I want to make that disclaimer because the name translated means "Tits Volleyball" and you may be wondering just what kind of couple we are. The movie's about a bunch of JHS class rejects who get all hot and bothered for the new teacher and exploit her emotional vulnerabilities in order to extract a promise that she'll strip naked for them if they can win a tournament. This movie embodies so very much that is wrong with Japan today, most especially that these kids can make any ridiculous (and illegal) demands they want and get away scot free, and that a teacher would allow themselves to go along with it. Eventually she develops a sort of Stockholm Syndrome about the situation, smiling and encouraging the boys to work hard in order to see her naked flesh and even declaring to her suave, Mr. Perfect ex-boyfriend who seems genuinely to want to be in her life again that her breasts "belong to their dreams". Why didn't I think of this brilliant plan in my youth? Wait, perhaps it's because none of my teachers were former swimsuit models.

Just when you think this country can't toss any more weird at you it glorifies underage teacher-student striptease pacts on the silver screen. God Bless Japan.

--Matt

Dreams I've Had

A while ago...

I'm in Kusu and coming out of the breakfast buffet at the massive Mori JHS student dorms (which doesn't exist) when my cousin, Manuel, suddenly shows up. There's a Renaissance Fair/flea market in town and we both walk over to see what's for sale. In one of the tents they're showing the preview to the next Harry Potter movie, which is much more raunchy and Porky's-like than I recall the previous HP flicks being. There were women at bowling alleys being attacked by wacky cursed vibrators if that gives you any indication for what the preview was all about. After the preview we walk around the fair until an Andre the Giant-sized nerdy  shopkeeper cheats my cousin out of some money and I start arguing with him, finally laying into him with a folding chair.

Then the alarm.

Last week...

I'm in some seaside condo Yuppieville kind of place with Maia and Vania, an ALT in Hita who hails from New Zealand. Not sure what we're doing there, but all of the sudden Vania tells us that she used to be a big child movie star in NZ and the three of us get launched into a black and white flashback to the exact scene she was famous for--at the beach, in the rain, child-Vania stumbles into a sandy depression filled with washed up seaweed and begins to cry. After the flashback we all drive somewhere, like, just around the corner and when we get out of the car again I accidentally ding some douchebag's Lexus with my car door. Said douchebag, sensing his car has been wanged, exits a condo complex in a tizzy and kidnaps Maia, tossing her into the back seat of his douchbag friend's waiting Humvee. With Flash-like speed I dash over and hop in too. In addition to Maia the back seat is occupied by a couple of skanky blondes, but I ignore that and proceed to choke the shit out of the driver.

Last week also...

Some gangsters killed my "good friend" (I don't know who he was really, just that he was my "good friend") and I'm devastated. Looking for solace I try converting to the Jewish faith and attend synagogue. By the way, at some point I track down the man or men who killed my friend before attending synagogue. While there I notice that there are many black Jews in the congregation, but they're all sitting in the back. The Jewish faith is somewhat racist in my dreams I suppose. Well, I interrupt everything and call the rabbi down to tell him what's up and he asks if I know who did it, to which I respond 'yes'. (The following is in that sterotypical rabbi's voice we see in the movies so often, i.e. Benicio DelToro at the beginning of Snatch) "Well, why didn't you say this before, let's go kill the the bastards. You know, it's Thursday and to us Jews it's OK to kill on Thursday."

Last night...

World War II wasn't fought in the Pacific against America and Japan, it was America vs. China somehow, and America just won. Though I vaguely recall something about seducing a female Chinese general into giving occupying forces some bit of data that's not really the important thing. As I stride through the streets of devastated Shanghai a triumphant Richard Nixon runs up with two matching plastic buckets, hands me one and starts running down the street flinging the contents into the non-crowds of Chinese people yelling "Sanity has returned! I have meat business cards for everyone! It's OK again because meat business cards are here!" Naturally I join in the flinging of said meaty cards.

Hey, She Had Keg Of Beer There

Now is that giddy transition period between winter and spring in Japan and oh boy, let me tell you, does it do wonders for the human psyche forced to to live through that most horrible of the four seasons. It's like the feeling you'd get after passing out from a night of binge drinking Bailey's Irish Cream with the graduating class of the Tijuana Sub-basement Beauty College and being handcuffed to a steam pipe while your pockets are picked clean (even the lint!), but then waking up to find you've been blessed with super-strength and -stamina, a kick ass video wrist phone and, in fact, you own the only breeding pair of unicorns on the planet. And for that reason I'm glad that Lisa unintentionally delayed her beach birthday party until last Saturday, even if it turned out to be a sort of comedy of errors for me.

The plan, as I understood it, was deceitfully simple: Get from Kusu to Sumie Beach in Miyazaki Prefecture (the beach I and several other ALTs went last summer), stopping along the way at the astounding coffee otaku's mobile caffeine dispensary in Kuju and Bungo-Ono City's Harajiri Falls to finally rectify a shameful sightseeing oversight. Departing my apartment at noon, the fabulous weather, really excellent time we made over to Kuju via the scenic Yamanami Highway mixed with Maia's Icelandic synth-pop and bossa nova CDs to equal a recipe for the perfect road trip.

I've been visiting the Kuju area quite a bit lately and the magnetic attraction is, I feel, completely justified. The area is jam packed full of hot springs, cafes and wide open spaces, which are three things I seek out when the craving for relaxation overtakes me. The mobile cafe we visited this day may not be the best cup of joe in the land, but their variety, quality and price beats the ever loving hell out of virtually all cafes in Japan, stationary or with wheels. I ordered an iced Vienna coffee and was floored when it came with really real whipped cream—thick!—and a single coffee bean for decoration on top. Before she willed the coffee to life I got to specify which type of coffee and how strong I wanted it. Now that's service! It was so tasty I completely forgot about that bean until I damn near lost a tooth and control of the car when I bit down on it hard.

The michi no eki at Harajiri Falls (yes, another one down!) was hopping to say the least. There was a tulip festival going down and we couldn't find parking in the normal lot so I decided to just toss the car illegally onto the sidewalk and call it parking. Don't worry, there are no consequences here. The tulip fields were impressive, like a walk through Holland only without all the best bits, i.e. the hookers and drugs, but the real attractions of the place were the bridge and waterfall. The bridge is a traditional wood plank-lashed rope span with steel cables slyly underpinning the whole thing. Still, when you're walking on it with fifteen other people going both ways it feels about as stable as the bridge in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Harajiri Falls, which is best viewed from the center of that bridge, is like a micro-Niagara in that it's long and low, however you stand a much better chance of surviving a jump from this one (go back to the old wine barrel days!). Above the falls, perched in the waters feeding them, is a large torii. The whole package viewed together must be spectacular in the sunset.

It's so low I just want to jump off it so badly. If only there weren't sternly worded signs to stop me.

East to Mie and south over the mountains towards Nobeoka, we're retracing parts of last year's charity bike trip and I can't help but think how it took us a day-and-a-half to make it over this hump while we did something like this every day of this year's. Whoops. Anyways, nothing much exciting happened until we arrived at Sumie Beach, home to Deus Ex Cibo, my nickname for possibly the single most enigmatic chef in Japan (well, he's in the running with the chef of Hita's Orange). When I came here last summer I marveled at his Thai vegitable green curry and told Maia about it who patiently waited nine months to try it out. She was awestruck. And so was I, for that matter, but with my fried rice of all things. Fried rice: The stuff is about as basic, cheap and forgettable as you can get when it comes to Chinese cuisine and yet this beach bum Miyazaki Prefecture senior citizen can mix it with his ancient blend of herbs and spices, fold in some mountain greens, dry salted pork and fry it up into an entirely unique flavor experience. Oh, and it wasn't oily either! Never doubt the power of back country folk cooking.

We kicked around the beach for a while waiting for others to arrive. A cryptic phone call from Lisa in which she said she had to run home for fifteen minutes to get some stuff should have tipped me off earlier that something wasn't quite right. Sumie Beach and Tsukumi are more like an hour and a half apart by car. It wasn't until we actually wanted to go see which cabin we'd stay in when it hit me—we were at the wrong beach.

Heading to Sumie Beach wasn't a complete washout by any stretch. Maia got her longed for green curry, I got my Karate Kid on...

Ultimately the fault for such a colossal mistake lay on my shoulders and seeing as how it was nearly six I peeled out of there north, aiming towards the mountainous coastal roads. Just before the spot where Miyazaki becomes Oita the main road linking the two prefectures' seaside towns turns from two-lane well-paved thoroughfare to rutted winding horse path. To give you an idea of how rural this road was I'll tell you that I almost hit a wild monkey that leaped off the road just as I turned a bend. Well, no matter how humiliating and time-consuming this mistake was at least we can say we ate some of the best beachside food in Japan and saw a wild monkey.

...and we both engaged in antics with an abandoned child's wheelchair. Fun was had by all!

We did finally end up reaching the cabins where Lisa, perhaps the kindest among all the 2007 incoming ALTs, was waiting with a heart-shaped balloon. The rest of the night went off without a hitch...mostly. I can't pour my own beer from a keg to save my life, Maia and I made WAY too much salad and somehow Nobu's ladyfriend's two JHS-aged kids played beer pong with us (no, they didn't drink any). Somewhere around 2:30AM I fell into a comfortable inebriated sleep.

I was awoken at 6:00. Maia had been vomiting into the toilet all night thanks to (probably) some bad mushrooms we grilled up and I had to get her to a hospital. Nobu and Lisa were great in helping us find one that was nominally open on a Sunday morning and though a fairly cranky doctor had to be called and woken from bed to treat Maia the job got done. Seriously, a far cry from the hospitals in Kitakyushu. Feeling like I was straddling the line between consciousness and Hunter S. Thompson-esque hallucination, and with Maia fully conked out after a night bent over the loo the weekend was over for us. A rather funky ending for a weekend that ran the emotional gamut. We'll get back to Sumie this summer for a real weekend of sand and swim at that beach...and, of course, my magic fried rice.

--Matt

The Holy Land (of Fish)

I've never understood how Japanese business works. All the way back to my college days when I would get bored, drink a beer and putz around the city center on my bike looking for more beer I peered into fantastically overpriced, perpetually customer-less shops and wracked my brains to figure out why their business model didn't see them quickly and soundly collapse like the house of cards they appear to be built on, as would happen in any other market economy. Believe it or not, some of them remain to this day!

Where am I going with this again...?

Oh, right, sushi. Kappa Sushi is a new player in the kaitenzushi (conveyer belt sushi) wars of Hita, and I have no flippin' clue why it's set up shop here. The polar opposite of the previously mentioned failed business models, Kappa is such a shining light of fabulousness in the dining abyss of Western Oita Prefecture that after tasting from their Well of Infinite Delights I fully expect the citizens of other nearby municipalities to riot in the street, clawing and tearing at the eye sockets of police and elected officials as they wonder why--why!--haven't they one in their town. Now, Kappa is a pretty famous chain of kaitenzushi shops from the Tokyo area with (now) three shops in Kyushu, the other two being in Fukuoka and Dazaifu, and it's precisely that hipness and regional rarity that has me so confused--just what the hell are they doing in Hita?

Two seemingly simple factors make Kappa so utterly fascinating: the ordering and delivery systems. A trip to a normal kaitenzushi shop might have you scanning the approaching or even distant items on the ever-moving belt for tasty morsels, sometimes leading to disappointment when some jackass at the table just upstream of you takes the plate you've been waiting for, like, two minutes for. I hate them. If nothing appeals to you then there's always a sushi chef to yell orders at, but then there's the soul-sapping guilt that comes with brusquely ordering around another human being. Kappa does away with the human element almost entirely with a touchscreen ordering system that has all the sushi categorized in menus by type and then alphabetically arrayed. Not long after inputting your order--and this is the part you need to be sitting down for--an OMGWTF miniature shinkansen bullet train comes shooting out of the wall and stops at your table with the goods for you to pluck off and chow down on! Holy Bejeebuz!

If you don't like the normal fare circulating around the belt, i.e. this wiener maki, just look up at the touchscreen...

...and select the type of sushi or side dish you want to order and it will soon be delivered by...

...an OMGWTF bullet train, straight to your table. Press a red button to make it go back to its hole in the wall.

I swear, if the place didn't close I'd never leave.

--Matt